Other Common Names:
Cedar, White Arbor-vitae, Northern White Cedar, Eastern Cedar, American Arbor-vitae.
White Cedar is found only in scattered patches west of Summerside. It is a small tree reaching a height of 40 feet with a diameter up to 1 foot. The trunk tapers greatly and is often twisted. Its crown is conical, dense, long and narrow. Growing in the open, the tree often has a trim artificial appearance, almost as if it had been pruned.
Eastern white cedar commonly occurs in swamps or similar wet sites but will grow on thin, often dry limestone ridges. It grows in pure stands or in mixtures of spruce, balsam fir, larch, black ash, speckled alder and white elm.
Its wood is the lightest and most resistant to decay of all our Canadian woods. In P.E.I. it is used mainly as posts but other uses are made of it for shingles, poles and boat building.
DESCRIPTION
LEAVES: Scale-like, pointed, 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch long, dark ye11ow-green, overlapping in pairs pressed closely to the twig, each pair at right angles to the pair below.
FLOWERS: April-May; unisexual, tiny cone-like bodies, male yellowish, female pinkish at pollination; both sexes terminal on different twigs of the same tree.
FRUIT: Late summer; an oblong erect cone, 1/3 to 3/4 of an inch long, composed of 4 to 6 pairs of thin brown scales, containing the small winged seeds; opening at maturity, but persisting on the tree over winter.
TWIGS: Slender, flattened, arranged in flat, fan-shaped sprays. Buds minute, without scales, protected by the leaves.
BARK: Thin reddish-brown, shreddy, forming a network of narrow ridges and shallow furrows on old trunks.
WOOD: Very light, soft, not strong, brittle, non-porous, fragrant; light brown with nearly white sapwood.
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